SECRET CANDIDATES

If you’re not a security expert and you're looking for a crypto filesystem, you may be wondering about the alternatives. We took at a look at some popular crypto options for Linux.

Crypto filesystems keep your data safe – even if someone steals your computer. The recent popularity of portable PCs has brought increased awareness about the need for protection, but even users with desktop systems have reasons for wanting to ensure that their data stays secret. Linux offers a number of encrypted filesystem options – each with a different approach to the encryption problem. We took a look at some of the alternatives, with the goal of providing some insights on encryption techniques, code quality, and the relative merits of the various solutions. We examined the following encrypted filesystems: • Loop-AES • DM-Crypt • Truecrypt • Crypto-FS • Enc-FS In addition to looking at technologies and techniques, we will also examined some performance parameters for these encryption options.

Related content

Modern installers offer the option of encryption with just a few clicks, but you might want to take control of the process. We show how to encrypt your partitions safely without sacrificing convenience.